Jim McGregor on how he's become one of the most successful foreign businessmen in the Middle Kingdom

Hello and welcome to the Rich Robinson Show. I'm your host, Rich Robinson. Over the past 25 years, I've been an entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and professor here in Asia. After nearly a quarter of a century in China, I'm now based here in Bali, Indonesia, the island of the gods. Asia is my home now. 60% of the world's population also lives here, but I would contend 80% of the world's dynamism and opportunity is right here in the region. On the show, you'll hear candid and fun conversations with some of my friends and colleagues, people I've met along my journey, entrepreneurs, operators, experts that will help you unlock actionable insights around the Asia region and the entrepreneurial agility that actually defines it. This first season, season 1 of The Rich Robinson Show, is titled At the Speed of China. Like, wait for it, at the speed of light. Things happen fast in China, and in this season 1, we're gonna take a deeper look at that. The rapid economic development over the past few decades, as well as the speed and cycles of innovation taking Place all day, every day, right now.

Let's go, Jio! Jim McGregor, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to give a round of applause. This is known, ladies and gentlemen out in the podcast land, as a get if you're going to do a podcast that's going to talk about China. And you can get Jim McGregor on the show, then you're already halfway there. Welcome, my friend. It's really lovely to see you.

Good to see you, Rich. We had some good times together in China.

Indeed. I still remember the very first time that I laid eyes on you public speaking in the late '90s, when you were running the show at the Dow Jones. You said Peter Yip is a charlatan. And I was like, I love this guy. Who is this guy? I need to know this guy. But before we dig into that and some of your China adventures, I'd love to have you share your hero's journey of how you ended up in the Middle Kingdom at a time when most people were zagging, I think maybe to like Japan. You're zigging to the Big Smoke as it's known. How did that happen?

Well, if you want to go way back, please. I got expelled from a Catholic high school my senior year. And then I decided I'd better grow up and see the world.

I have to interrupt, I apologize. I almost got— I was this hair's away from getting expelled from an all-boy Jesuit high school in Boston. So that's excellent. You had me at expelled. Anyway, keep going. That's great.

Then I decided I would join the Army and get the GI Bill and kind of grow up. And so this was 1971. And then being 17 and your brain is not that deeply formed, I thought, well, if I'm going in the Army, I should go see what a war is like. And I volunteered for Vietnam.

Wow.

After everybody else had gone to Canada and everybody had deferments, not out of huge patriotism, I just wanted to see what a war was like. So I joined the Army, ended up in the infantry in Vietnam, and that I grew up. I decided that probably wasn't my best decision, but I came out of it.

Wow. Do you mind sharing an anecdote from there? Something that you like, a pivotal moment?

Well, I can tell you what it did for me. By the time I got into Vietnam, there was draft deferments for everybody who was in college, et cetera, or connected. So it was really Hispanics and inner city Blacks and a few people like me that were kind of screw-ups. And so it really woke me up to, you know, I'm from Duluth, Minnesota, which is, you know, way up north and pretty lily white in those days. And I learned about other people and other races and it changed my life. And even today, I have a deep belief. If you want to fix the American political system, you need national service so that people from different races and different economic groups mix when they're young.

Yes.

It's hard to hate somebody you know. So anyway, that changed, that changed my life profoundly in being able to open my eyes to the world, but it also opened my eyes to Asia and also to journalism. 'Cause I saw journalists who went on missions with us and I realized that was an interesting job without a lot of adult supervision. You could be pretty free. So I went and became a journalist and kept my eye on Asia. And I was a police reporter in LA going from murder to murder for a few years. And then I went and covered Congress during the Reagan administration.

Wow.

But I kept my eye on Asia and I looked at China as what was happening. So in '85, with my sister who was working in refugee camps in Thailand, we backpacked around China for a few weeks. And I came back thinking this is going to be the country, most important country in my lifetime. So I convinced my wife, who's also from small town Duluth, Minnesota. And at age 33, we got rid of everything we owned and, and moved to Taiwan to learn Mandarin and, you know, start over.

Wow. So '85, you smelt it like you could detect this was going to be the biggest story of our collective lives. And you were absolutely spot on. Like, what was it that sparked that insight?

Well, because I was interested in Asia because of Vietnam, I was reading a lot and I read the Far East Economic Review, that great old magazine cover to cover before it folded. Yeah. And in reading that magazine, I could see the rise of China. And so I thought I'd go give it a look.

And then back then one went to Taiwan to study Mandarin. That was the place to go back then.

Well, it was, you know, it was pretty hard in the mid-'80s to be able to wander around China and talk to people freely. And so I had actually, when I got back to the US, I started studying Mandarin in Washington through a US Department of Agriculture program. And my teacher had been in Taiwan and he said, you got to go to Taiwan to learn. So that's kind of what led us there. So your like农民普通话 was非常好。Well, you know, Taiwan was great because we arrived there in '87, and then the Wall Street Journal hired me within a few months because I'd been a reporter in Washington. I had a lot of experience at that time. And then the democracy movement broke out. And so I covered the whole democracy movement and watched the rise of the民进黨, the DPP. And, and it was really a fantastic time in Taiwan. I still have a very soft spot in my heart for Taiwan. My daughter was born there.

Yes.

It's really lovely. There's something about Taiwanese people. There's really this wonderful vibe there. I just love that country as well. Yeah. And I think also the expat community, it seems like there really is this select group of lawai who kind of came up through Taiwan in the '80s who really made a big impact into the mainland as well too.

Well, I remember the diplomats, American diplomats used to do their language training there. So once they were in the mainland. They also understood Taiwan, and so they had some sympathy towards Taiwan. But later on, when the language training moved to Beijing, the next group of diplomats really didn't know much about Taiwan, and many of them looked at Taiwan as a problem, not as something that's worth having some value.

Yeah, when I said农民不懂啊, I meant because of the Department of Agriculture, not because of the Taiwanese before. Yeah, so then the path from there to Beijing, you got deeper and deeper involved with Dow Jones, right? And then. You end up running the show.

Well, the Wall Street Journal offered me the Beijing correspondent job and I jumped at it in 1990. And so I got there in '90, a year after Tiananmen. I had the whole country to myself. The internet was not around yet. So your editors, you know, your editors couldn't find you or keep track of you that much. I had a lot of freedom. And so I traveled the country widely and wrote in-depth stories because the Gulf War had started. And so the focus of the news had moved to the Middle East and a lot of The companies had run out of China after Tiananmen, some of them had. So I had that time to, and a very good editor at the Wall Street Journal who gave me the time. So I traveled the country, did in-depth stories and really got to know the place. I was very lucky and I had the whole thing to myself. But then as time went on in '93, '94, Peter Kahn, the CEO of Dow Jones and his wife, Karen House, who was actually the head of international, came and I showed them around China. And being a reporter, I knew everything, right? So I said, you should do this. You should do that. You should do this. And at the end of the visit, they called my bluff and said, okay, would you like to be our new business representative in China for Dow Jones? And I always thought I'd be a reporter forever, but I could already see that they were— reporters' benefits and all that were starting to come under scrutiny. And I had 2 kids. So I said, yeah. And so then I, over the next 7 years, I built it to 150 because There was, at that time, there wasn't all the restrictions on the media. It was all gray areas. So we dug deeply into every—

Push that envelope.

Yeah, we were publishing Wall Street Journal articles in Chinese newspapers and splitting the revenue on advertising. We started stock market indexes for the Chinese market. We had the first business news half-hour show in China that we had our own crew inside of Shanghai TV that we put it together and then we syndicated it ourselves. Yeah, it was great fun and China was open and wanting to develop its business media was much more. And so it was a great time. And then we did the first Chinese language newswire by a foreign company. We had a 24-hour translation operation in Beijing that translated stock market news.

Amazing. Yeah. I remember when I first moved to China in '96, I mean, you guys were already a force of nature in the mainland and a lot of the alums and people that worked underneath you there, you created kind of like, there's a PayPal mafia. I think there's kind of a Dow Jones mafia that came out of that nexus.

Yeah.

And I think when you were there in '90, you know, I first got there in '93 and I took the train through Siberia just as a tourist, but it was, you know, the thesis of my book At the Speed of China is that it's kind of like a 4-to-1 ratio. 4 years in the West is a year in China. So a generation, 20 years is like a half decade. And I think in 1990, it was much closer to Mao than to now. And in the last 30 years, it's changed so dramatically. What are some of the things that you recall from that? 1990 sort of travels around China that's just kind of a bygone era?

Well, I remember as I traveled around, actually, you would get great access. Party secretaries would meet with you because I was the Wall Street Journal. They were really hurting after Tiananmen. And so you would sit down with these guys and they would read you the talking points of the day, whether it was peaceful evolution or Taiwan. They would go through the litany of what the party message was. And then they would say, look, how can you help us get foreign investment? We have this new economic zone. How do you bring in foreign investment here? You know, the power was on the side. You know, they were really eager to develop and the access was incredible. And, you know, I became a head of the Foreign Correspondents Club in '91 because I went on a reporting trip to Chengdu. And while I was gone, the other correspondents said, let's make him be the president. And I came back. So I was the head of it.

Instead of a coup while you were away, you got elected while you, while you were away.

That the Communist Party does not have a sense of humor at that time because we had this hilarious newsletter we wrote. Michael Browning, one of the greatest writers ever for a newspaper, for the Miami Herald, wrote this newsletter. It was pretty scathing actually about some of what we had to put up with, our handlers. And anyhow, we decided to have a little fun for our summer party. We called it the Peaceful Evolution Summer Ball. And Bo Xilai's brother, Bo Xicheng, was the head of the tourism administration of Beijing. And he shut us down. He wouldn't let any hotel, anybody have us.

Wow. Got wind of it. Yeah.

Well, and actually the People's Daily did an editorial against us. What was it?

不正之风.

It was like that ill wind from the east or something like that. You know, taking serious what we were saying.

Well, at least it was kind of poetic. So that's good.

So, but then there was a guy named Max Wilhelm who was the manager of the Great Wall Sheraton. And he actually, Zhao Jiang's daughter was his assistant. And he was very unhappy with, you know, what had gone on in 1989. So he actually put our party on because he put it in the garden behind the hotel. So it wasn't technically in the hotel. So yeah, but that's where I learned that the party doesn't have a sense of humor. That was a good lesson to get, get early on.

Indeed. So, you know, I was back in Beijing in November and I got a ticket to the AmCham Ball and it was lovely to see you. Up on the screen from your lake house in Minnesota. And you're getting an award, well-deserved, for your involvement with the American Chamber of Commerce. And, you know, share a little bit about that and some of the bridging that you've done, some of the— what did you call them? Door knocks to DC. Because the purpose of this book is that China is an adversary. China is also a competitor and China is also a cooperation partner. Right? It's all three of those. And you can't just say, oh, you know, like Russia is an adversary and we don't cooperate or compete with them back in the Cold War. Good. Give us a little bit of vodka and caviar. But other than that, you know, arm's length, right? Like it's so much more nuanced and you have to engage with China and you have to find the best ways to compete as well too. And I think engagement is so important. And I think that's one of the things that you as a businessman have been really terrific at doing, bridging that gap. And I'd love to hear some You know, anecdotes and history behind that, please.

Well, getting into AmCham was interesting because when I first got to Beijing for the Wall Street Journal, nobody would talk to me. I remember calling up the head of IBM and he hung up on me because it was after Tiananmen. These guys were all very nervous. And so I needed to talk to the business community. So I went and joined AmCham as an American company, because I'd actually been a member of AmCham in Taipei. And what was his name? There was a former colonel who was heading up one of the multinationals who was, in those days, the AmCham board met around a table at the Great Wall Sheraton coffee shop. It wasn't a huge organization. And UTC, United Technologies. And he said, if they let a reporter in, he would resign. But Tim Stratford was head of the commercial section in those days. And he, he convinced them to let me in. And I did an agreement. I said, look, the ambassador in those days did a briefing for the business community and a briefing for journalists separately. I said, I do not need to be in that briefing for the business community. They can tell the ambassador their problems without a reporter in the room. I don't want that. I just want to go to the receptions and—

Okay, fair enough.

So people know who I am and they're not scared of me. And so I got in and then 2 years later I was chairman. And because I had been a reporter on Capitol Hill in Washington during the Reagan administration, so I knew my way around Washington. And so we would go once a year to Washington on what we called the door knock to meet with the administration officials and members of Congress and tell them our view of China, and we actually got a lot of credibility and people listened to us. And we had high-level meetings because we were on the ground and we knew what we were talking about. And we were very careful to not let companies talk about their own issues. We would not let the local government relations people in Washington join us. It had to be people based in China. And you know, we lobbied for MFN. We lobbied for China getting into WTO. Our line was, look, they're in the— China's going in a reasonable direction. You know, let's be fair. And China was. I mean, today people say, oh, you were a bunch of Philistines who were tricked and China was never going in that direction. I think China changed directions actually, basically under who and when to start after the global financial crisis. But anyhow, I did that year after year after year. And it ended up to be kind of a fun, it was like, you know, a camping trip every year because it was a group of people that were longtime China people like Les Ross and Tim Stratford and many others. And we all knew each other and we'd have some fun because, you know, some of these members of Congress we would meet with were very serious people and some were pretty wacky. And so there was some entertaining times.

Any anecdote you can share that's safe for public?

Well, yeah, there was one recently, probably 3 years ago, 4 years ago, we were meeting with a congressman who I won't say his name, who was a conservative Republican who loved Donald Trump. And so, you know, that was fine. We listened to that. He opened the meeting for the Telling us how Trump was the smartest man on earth and playing chess while everybody else is playing checkers. That's fine. But we were talking to him about some legislation to tighten up CFIUS, the investment review law. And he was a supporter. And I said to him, look, that's great. We're very supportive of this, but it's got to be transparent. You can't just stick all these companies in there. And especially on export controls. And this is also export controls. These 2 laws were being redone. But companies need to know what's going on. They can't just be a black box and then a decision comes out. And I said, if it's a black box, it's going to look like the Chinese system. It's going to be like the NDRC. And he got up and he started yelling at me. He goes, are you calling Donald Trump and I a communist? Get out of my office, get out of my office. And the other guys in the room are looking at me and they're kind of worried. And I thought it was kind of fun because I'd been around Congress a lot. Anyhow, I didn't leave. And I said, no, you misunderstood.

Wow.

That's great. Well, I think, you know, one of the things that I've learned about you being from Minnesota is that there's a certain kind of perception of Midwesterners, but I think that you're from like the Rust Belt. And I think that you're from like this down-home American, like very likable, cordial, all-American aspect to you, but you're also like a tough bastard. Right. And I think maybe that sort of like Rust Belt, and I appreciate that growing up from Boston, right. There's that kind of like duality as well too. Right. It's like all the way up to a point and you don't get easily rattled. I think, am I right in assuming that like the kind of Rust Belt upbringing, that it's not all like just apple pie and like, there's like a little bit of a backbone and like an edginess to it?

Well, I grew up in a family of 9 children and in Duluth, Minnesota in the '70s, when we all got out of high school, it was like 20, 25% unemployment because all the steel mill and all the heavy industry was closing down. And, uh, you know, look, I was infantry in Vietnam and I was a police reporter going from murder to murder. You know, I've, I've seen a few things and I actually care a lot about the United States and where this country is going. And also I've got great affection for the Chinese people. And so being in the middle of those—

And you can be both, right? And these days it seems like you're not allowed.

Well, yeah, I, I always talk about the Chinese people. I don't talk about the party. My affection and respect is really for the Chinese people. The Communist Party actually has done some very good things for China, but it's kind of lost its way right now in really alienating China from the world and taking this very hard. And that was, I believe it was quite unnecessary, but everybody's caught up in victimization these days. America says we're a victim of China. They stole our jobs. And China says they're a victim of America trying to keep us poor. And I think that's just because we don't have inspired leadership in either country.

Well said. These days now you're working, you have been for quite a while with Abco, a very well-regarded firm. And you're doing, I'm sure, a lot of interesting work. Anything you can share about, you know, without disclosing anything, of course, of that sort of, you know, bridging between China and the West with some companies and some of the issues that you're facing these days?

Well, you know, there used to be a lot of power on the side of foreign companies in China because China did not have well-developed companies and technologies. And those days are gone. Foreigners used to be special in China, were treated special, and they're now a lot less than special. A friend in Beijing the other day put it this way: there's 2 kinds of foreign companies in China, those that China needs and those that need China. You can do business there. If China doesn't need you, then it's going to be tougher and tougher. It's almost that simple. And companies have to be aware of that. You know, do you have a residence permit or a visitor visa in China as a company? Are you just there for a while? They're trying to figure out what you do and replace you, or are you there for the long term? And I think that's still up in the air, actually. And also, for many years we worked with market entry. Now we work with market survival. How do you deal with the cybersecurity law? How do you deal with Made in China 2025? How do you deal with cross-border data? All of these issues. But we're also helping Chinese companies that are going out internationally that are good companies that are not state-owned companies that are not out exploiting the world that are Chinese Entrepreneurs, and it's getting harder and harder for them because China as a country or as an entity is so distrusted now that a Chinese company going out is automatically has that label on their forehead that you must be controlled by the party, you must be exploiting information, you must be gathering. It's really kind of off the charts.

And what are they doing in response to that? Are they trying to like set up a global headquarters in Singapore or try to change the narrative or? Are they just, you know, well, they're trying to get more understood.

I mean, they're trying to talk to people and actually show that, you know, they're trying to get more involved in international organizations to show that they have data security, that they are as good on data security as anybody. They're trying to be more transparent, not everybody, but some of the good companies. And in many cases, they're foregoing the US market. And also in some ways, sometimes foregoing Europe. And it's like Mao, you know, when Mao, you know, attacked the cities by surrounding them in the countryside.

Countryside. Yes. Doing Africa, Southeast Asia, maybe LATAM. Yeah. Interesting. Fascinating. So, yeah, so that's, you know, part of the book as well too, is that, you know, you don't have to like exactly what's going on in China or you don't even have to intend to even compete inside China. But I think this kind of competitive drive and the pace and pulse of innovation and the entire spectrum of ideation and prototyping and, you know, launching and marketing and customer service. Like everything is just at a different clock speed in China. And oftentimes I think people look at China just with, you know, one sort of angle, like, oh, we hate the New England Patriots. But, you know, hey, you don't have to love the team, but there's a lot you can learn from their tactics and what they do at the coaching level and at the player level too. And I think more and more you see Chinese companies going abroad, like You know, TikTok, ByteDance, or, you know, Alibaba and others. And I think there's going to be a lot more of these. You know, here in Indonesia, there's Alvin Tse, who used to be the chief of staff for international for Xiaomi. And now he runs Xiaomi for Indonesia and it's a billion-dollar unit and he just moved them to first place in Indonesia. And that's going to happen, I think, a lot more Chinese companies being more aggressive going abroad. And you've been working, you've known some of the best entrepreneurs in China way back before. The internet boom started, Charles Zhang from Sohu and, you know, that first wave. And maybe you can share your perspective on Chinese entrepreneurs and how they're just, you know, wired a little bit differently and how they compete.

Let me bring this way back to Chinese competition. When I first got to Beijing in 1990, I brought a mountain bike from Taipei and I would go riding around on what today is the Second Ring Road. In those days, it was just a road that kind of circled around where the old city wall used to be. And because I lived in a diplomatic compound where Chinese people weren't allowed in unless they were working for the foreign ministry and keeping an eye on you, I'd have to go out and ride my bike and try to talk to people. So I'd go out at night and I'd ride around and I'd talk to people riding their bikes. And, you know, I'd tell them I was a journalist and often they'd just turn away, but sometimes they would, because it was anonymous, they would talk to me for quite a while. But one thing that was quite interesting is I had this mountain bike and I wasn't racing, but young Chinese people would see me on this mountain bike and they'd go, how cool. Like I had a Porsche or something, but then on their rickety flying pigeons, they would try to beat me. They would have to start really going and trying to beat me, even though I wasn't racing. But I was a foreigner on a fancier bike. That is one place where I really saw the competitive spirit of the Chinese people. When I would hire people, I really tried to hire people from the countryside or from small towns who had gotten themselves to Beijing through a university or whatever. I just remember whenever I interviewed people, they would. Rang in my head, they would say, I will do my best. I will try my best. And they were so eager and, you know, they were sleeping under their desks. You'd have to kind of kick them out of the office. Like, go, go home for a while. Everybody's an entrepreneur. Everybody had a business plan after, you know, if you had an IE taking care of your child within a month, they have some business plan in there with their cousin or something. Here's a funny story. Well, interesting story. There was a lady from our Japan office who came to China. She was European for her honeymoon. And her husband, who I'd had dinner with the two of them, was running down Coal Hill behind the Forbidden City with her on his back, just kind of running and having fun. He tripped and she went flying over his head and hit her head on a rock and really kind of went into, I don't know if convulsions is the right word, but some Very nice Chinese man grabbed her, put them in a taxi, and took them to this little hospital in western Beijing. So I get a call. I go pick them up. It was a pretty local hospital, and I pick them up and I bring them to Xiehe, to the capital hospital. And anyhow, she had to be there for a few days. They didn't do surgery, but she came out of it. And that guy that helped them. You know, he came to see them and we were very nice to him. About 2 months later, I get a call from him and he'd like to come see me in his office. So I, in my office, so he comes and he's just a worker. This isn't anybody who's very sophisticated. He comes with his friend and I'm running Dow Jones, you know, an information company. They come in my office and his friend has what they are saying is an oxygen machine, a portable oxygen machine because pollution is coming. So his friend Turns on machine. This guy puts two tubes, one into each nostril, and he's introducing the machine to me. Well, this thing is supposedly pumping oxygen into his nose, and he wants to see if Dow Jones will invest in this. I mean that you know that's where I saw ramp entrepreneurship. Then you look at how quickly Chinese companies iterate with their business models and their products. Why? Because it's so competitive. It's not protected. I mean, I think the lack of IP protection really propelled the Chinese business because you couldn't sit back on your laurels. The guy next to you is, as soon as somebody sees a business model, you know how it is. If somebody opens a shoe store on a street, you're going to have 20 shoe stores on that street.

Oh, you mean Shoe Street? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And that's what happens. And so people, it's very, very dog-eat-dog competitive when it comes to doing business and making money. And also I think there's a feeling of Make hay while the sun shines. This may not last. And you see this in some of these spectacular corruption where you've got a party official who just does spectacular corruption, like fills their basement with bundles of cash and gold bars, and they have to take it away with trucks. How could somebody do that? I think they just kind of think I'm going to make hay while the sun shines. And if I get 10 good years and they get me later, well, I had 10 good years. It's hard to wrap your head around, but I think they're so used to Change in their country. The things are going well for a while, then they turn and they twist. You you better grab things while you can.

Indeed.

Yeah.

Excellent anecdote. Thanks for sharing. And speaking of twists and turns, I usually don't cover that many topical things, but you know last month was a very topsy-turvy month, especially for tech companies and educational companies. How do you explain it to some of your clients in the West and frame why and what happened?

Well, strategically, it's very understandable. Tactically, it's typical for the Communist Party. Party to overdo things and take it too far. But, you know, these big tech companies, the big platforms were exploiting people's personal data. They were running monopolies where if you're on my platform, you can't be on these other platforms. China got very worried about that. They have better data than the party. And on education, the same thing. They're worried about exploiting people with all these education platforms and people can't afford, you know, They want them to have more kids, but they won't have more kids because they can't afford it.

They just put in a 3-child policy, but they're like, I can't even afford one because even though school's free, I have to keep up with the Joneses and put maybe 2/3 of my disposable income into tutoring. Right. And it just is a race to the bottom.

But you know, then they go too far. And what will happen now is that the wealthier families will have private tutors come to their homes and the other Kids could miss out. I mean, when you have the gaokao, the college entrance system, it's going to feed that kind of even Taiwan, the bushi bonds, you know, the same thing. Korea, the same thing on study outside of school to be to stay ahead of the other kids. They need significant change. You can't just go after one thing. Actually, I think they realize that now. China just announced they're putting together a five-year plan on reforming technology and education, and you know they're going to do it in a more thoughtful way now because I think they realize what they do just one morning people will. Up and the government and party said, and it was the government and the party, not just the government, which is a much more powerful statement, that education companies will now have to be nonprofit. These education companies have to be nonprofit.

Multi-billion dollar market caps across, you know, multiple companies.

Yeah. Last I read, New Orient had lost 70% of its market cap. But also think about this, who's getting hurt? Rich Chinese entrepreneurs and foreign investors.

Western investors indeed.

It's not laobai xing. It's not the average Chinese citizen. So China doesn't care. And you know, all these foreign investors that lost buckets of money, China doesn't care because they'll be back. They know they'll be back because back at the trough when they see another opportunity, you know, who's got growth like China will for the next couple of decades? Nobody. So they don't care. They just say, oh, you know, so what? You lost some money. You'll be back indeed. Wow.

And so right now you're in the US doing remote work with clients and just like I'm doing remote control from Bali, but you have a base in Shanghai as well. And I think we'll all be building up our mini shampoo collections, probably post-Olympics next, next year. Maybe you could share a little bit about maybe some of your experiences and sort of the speed of change in China and lifestyle as a You know, raising a family there and maybe your life in Shanghai before you left compared to maybe when you got there and some of the things that you've observed.

Well, I lived 25 years in Beijing, in Shanghai at the end. When I first arrived in Beijing, we had Tingdian. You'd have electricity would go out at certain times because they didn't have enough power generation. And there was no supermarkets. You go to the Friendship Store and to the open markets. And in the fall, they still brought in cabbage from out in the fields and piled it like mountains. On the street corners and people come gather their cabbage and put it in their windowsills. And, you know, its leaves got spoiled, tear them away. And that was their vegetables. I mean, the way China, you know, you got to give the Chinese government a lot of credit for what they've done in making people's lives better in the food supply, in recreation and in parks and in infrastructure. And I mean, it's amazing the progress China made. And they were also very smart with foreigners. You know, when they wanted to bring in foreign business, they built villa complexes, they built golf courses, they helped the international schools get going. They wanted Westerners and foreigners who come into China to be comfortable because they want them there to invest. They knew that was important. They were very, very strategically smart in the way they did a lot of that. Those were the days. And, you know, even though China's a much more difficult place today, Especially, you know, for foreigners and all the nonsense you've got to put up with, you know, the anti-foreign nationalism that has been built up among the young people by the party over the years. I mean, the buzz of China.

Yes, it's addictive. It's just intoxicating.

There's a new restaurant where they're, you know, being served by robots. There's, you know, you name it. There's just all this great stuff. There's always new stuff happening all the time. And people are pretty optimistic and moving ahead in their lives. And I think that's what a lot of people in today's political atmosphere in the West do not understand is how much better—

the raw optimism. Yeah.

Optimism and how their lives have been made so much better. And actually even, you know, look, the Chinese system is working better for China right now than the Western democracies are working for our own people. And that is, if we want to compete with China, we, it's all about home. We got to get our shit together. Because right now, think of all these Chinese young people that go to American universities and have been watching the American political system. Do you think I think they go home and say, boy, I want some of that.

They did for most of the time that we were there, right? Absolutely right. But now in the past decade or so, especially last half decade, yeah, it's definitely not the best version of ourselves. That's for sure.

Well, and also I saw this happen after Tiananmen. The party got very worried that young people were becoming too enamored of the West. Remember the Goddess of Democracy and all that in the square? And so the propaganda has ratcheted up that as we rise, the West is out to keep us down and they want to keep us poor and they look down on us. And if you selectively quote congressmen and others on China, plenty of evidence for that.

If you do it selectively, you've got great evidence.

And, you know, the evening news in China, you know, is 3 parts. The first part is, you know, look how great our leaders are. The second part is look how good our country is doing. And the third part is look what a shit show the rest of the world is. And you know, that's every night. And we have been very, very good at supplying them with that third part. You know, the insurrection at the Capitol. Are you kidding me? The dysfunction of our democracy. We have to, you know, if we want to lead the world, we got to give people something that they would aspire to.

Yeah. I think that hope springs eternal and I really feel that this is like, you lived through it. Like I was born in '67 and the '60s, you know, were such a tumultuous time, '60s into the '70s. And I almost lamented like, oh, I kind of missed that. I kind of wish I'd experienced something like that. Right. And these things all come in cycles and I have to believe that there's a resiliency kind of baked into democracy, which is of course the worst form of government except for all other forms of government.

Right. Well, you know, I'm almost 68 years old now and I don't want to become one of these old men who says, oh, the world's going to hell.

And the balcony of the Muppets just— Yeah.

But, you know, think of yourself and look back. You are a World War II veteran. You came out of World War II. You got GI Bill to go to college. You got a GI loan to buy a house. You're the first person in your family to have an education. The US economy is booming because of the war machine we built has now been turned into consumer goods, big export. Things are going very well.

The highways are all new and fresh to transport those missiles and everything is Good.

And then the '60s happened and your kid has long hair, is doing acid, having sex in a cornfield while the rock and roll band plays. You probably thought the world was ending then, you know?

Yes. Indeed, right?

But you know, there's a great book by Jill Lepore called These Truths. Jill Lepore is a Harvard historian who also writes for The New Yorker. She's a beautiful writer. She has a book called These Truths, which is a great history of America. It kind of goes, it shows that America goes from shit show to shit show and fixes itself. Yeah.

You have to believe that while there are so many eras that were so much worse than what we're actually experiencing now. And yeah, and I do believe that there is a built-in resiliency. And I think that's what I kind of, you know, a small part of like this book is that like, this should be a little bit of a Sputnik moment. Like, you know what, like let's all run faster and be more competitive and let's compete and cooperate. At the same time and where there's an adversarial relationship, then that's, you know, that's over there, right? Anything sensitive with government or military, that's over there, but let's engage and compete and cooperate, but do it in a way where we're the best versions of ourselves and we're able to move at the same pace because especially today, you know, Elon Musk says at the end of the day, it's the pace of innovation is the only thing that matters because if you're able to You know, execute an experiment and you know more quickly than you can figure stuff out.

Well, actually, China may have done the U.S. a favor by really kind of going over the top in recent years on technology theft and pressure on companies and you know tightening its market and on and on and on. They've created one bipartisan issue in Washington, and that is that China is a bad guy, and it's over the top. But at least now it seems to be coalescing to we got to compete with China. We've got to invest. in ourselves. Because we went into what even Marco Rubio calls free market fundamentalism. We went too far in that we weren't investing in ourselves. We weren't putting money into R&D. And now that's turning around. And this legislation that is currently boiling in Congress on investing in technology and education, and, you know, we need to fix our immigration system. We need to invest in ourselves and compete with China. That's the best way to do it. You can't sit back and condemn China. You got to compete.

Amen. Well said. Hey, Jim, wonderful to catch up. Thanks so much for your time. You're, you know, just modeling as an amazing expat in China and in the business community and, you know, your book. And I just so respect and admire you. You're really an inspiration and I really appreciate it. Thank you.

That's way too kind. I'm just a person that, you know, had a great run in China.

That is incredibly beloved. And you know, nobody doesn't love you, then I got a problem with them. Everybody thinks you're the freaking best. What are you talking about? Take the compliment.

I'll take it. Okay.

It's Jim McGregor. Jim McGregor, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much. All the best in Minnesota. And I hope to give you a hug in the Middle Kingdom sometime soon.

That's a wrap.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Rich Robinson Show, season one at the speed of China. Visit therichrobinson.com/show to smash that subscribe button. Please also go to iTunes or whatever platform of choice, rate and comment. And until next time, thank you very much.再见。 See ya.